JENKINS: Stoned over 'rock-ribbed' Republicans

In a recent email, Leon Page, a freshly elected trustee of MiraCosta College, exercised his skills as linguist and attorney to pose three mortifying questions:

“Can you please find a word other than the meaningless ‘rock-ribbed’ to describe North County conservative Republicans?” he asked. “Surely four times in four months is enough, no? Surely, there are other adjectives that might apply?”

To ensure that his needle stuck deeply in my gelatinous ribs, Page included links to four recent columns in which I’d trotted out the musty phrase for yet another airing.

With flaming cheeks, I faked gaiety while responding to this well-known Republican newsmaker and his elephantine memory.

“That’s hilarious,” I replied. “I should be taken out and beaten by the cliché police. Thanks for reminding me that people actually remember what they’ve read. It’s a sobering thought.”

To explore the depth of my unconscious rib fetish, I executed a database search that included the roughly 2,400 North County-based columns I’ve written for this newspaper over the last 16 years.

While the phrase “rocked-ribbed Republican” appears intermittently under various bylines — Lionel Van Deerlin enjoyed it a couple of times in his local column, as did the syndicated William Safire — I’ve gone to the stony well regularly: 15 times overall; 12 times in the last six years.

As you probably know, “rock-ribbed Republican” has existed as political shorthand for more than a century.

For example, in the Oct. 15, 1912, edition of the San Diego Union, L.C. Miles is quoted in a congressional election story:

“I am a rock-ribbed Republican,” he said. “I have never voted for a Democrat in my life, but I shall vote for Kettner. He seems so nice that I almost believe he is a Republican. If he goes to Congress you will have done more than you have in a decade to put San Diego on the map.”

Miles got it right. Bill Kettner, a genial Democrat who won the endorsement of the reliably Republican San Diego Union, proved a genius at funneling federal money for Navy bases to his hometown. Congressman Kettner brought home the salty bacon.

According to Google’s amazing site charting word popularity (books.google.com/ngrams), “rock-ribbed Republican” entered the American bloodstream about 1895 and spiked during World War II. Since then, it’s cruised along, a colorful snatch of American speech, not quite ready to be discarded into the dustbin of political history.

While some might consider “rock-ribbed” pejorative, a put-down connoting pigheaded obstinacy, I honestly don’t hear it — or write it — that way. I’m with Mr. Miles. It’s a useful signal for where you stand in the party. Are you rightfully pure or are you squishy in the middle?

I would never, for example, refer to pro-environment Republican Pam Slater-Price, the retired county supervisor, as “rock-ribbed.”

As for Supervisor Bill Horn, the heavyweight property-rights champ of North County, yes, those ribs could be used as rebar for a high-rise.

Republicans, the true-red flavor, adhere to small-government principles, fundamental Constitutional values, in a way that left-wing Democrats, advocates of an evolving humane state dedicating to comforting the afflicted, simply do not.

Imagine a protypical “rock-ribbed Democrat” or, for that matter, a “bleeding-heart Republican.” You just can’t.

My newspaperman father, a New Deal Democrat in the vein of Kettner, delighted in the rocky turn of phrase when referring to the ruling party.

I can remember as a child in Coronado imagining all Republicans with the erect military posture befitting admirals and captains with rock-hard ribs. Somehow, the image stuck to my ribs and evidently refuses to let go.

In a postscripted jest, I suggested to Page that within the context of my running chronicle of North County’s endless wars and odysseys, “rock-ribbed” has developed into a kind of Homeric epithet along the lines of “rosy-fingered dawn,” “swift-footed Achilles” or “gray-eyed Athena.”

The truth, of course, is more prosaic.

North County isn’t Troy. I’m not Homer, an epic poet in the oral tradition. I’m not even blind.

Truth is, I’ve just been lazy when it comes to writing about Republicans. I’ve routinely defaulted to a phrase that strikes me as mellifluous, archaic and fun to type, sort of like “flying into high dudgeon,” a visually satisfying cliché I’d take out of the hangar every day if I could.

How much easier this writing dodge would be without verbal vigilantes like Page (and perhaps you) on patrol.